From nonprofits to digital newsrooms, Silicon Valley cafeterias to Hollywood writers’ rooms, unions are cropping up in unlikely places. Mark Medina and his coworker John Szalay had spoken about their working conditions before — how hard it was to live on such low wages, the meager benefits they received and the lack of respect they felt on the job at Burgerville. But their conversation one chilly May 2016 evening in Portland, Oregon, was different. Sitting on a bench in their matching black shirts during a 10-minute break, Medina openly brought up the U-word for the first time. Two years later, in April 2018, the BVWU became America’s only formally recognized fast-food union — the first successful one in nearly four decades, after a brief campaign in 1981 at a single Burger King in Detroit. Today, unions are popping up in all kinds of workplaces, even those with no history of traditional organizing, and millennial-aged workers are leading growth in overall union membership. | 
